July 2007

Character Development

Dismissing David Cameron and his gang as “toffs” is feeble, but I’ve noticed a few commentators refining that line lately. The Spectator blog points at Trevor Kavanagh, Political Editor of The Sun—there’s a job—claiming that the workrate of the Cameroonies compares unfavourably with that of either the Blairites or Brownites (as recounted by Alastair Campbell), […]

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Lifted

I like levitating terriers. Here are two more from a flickr user: Ollie & Muffet race at the BTCO Fun Day by Gavatron. And here’s a beagle with a piece of cucumber on its head.

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The Pathetic Bookshop

It is an important day for Britain. Since the abrupt collapse of our manufacturing base, our economy depends heavily upon fictional characters. Together, Lara Croft, James Bond, The Teletubbies, Simon Cowell, and Harry Potter now account for 43 percent of GDP. From time to time, J K Rowling dials 141, calls Buckingham Palace, and mutters quietly: “I […]

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Round-Up For The Run Ragged

Over the past few days I’ve been busy. I’ll continue to be so over the next few days. Here are quick links to some of the things that have caught my eye lately. Following up my recent post about David Cameron, not only were the voting slips in yesterday’s Ealing Southall by-election labelled “David Cameron’s […]

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Unseen Square Footage

A couple of years back I planned a new running scenario on PooterGeek: Tora-Bora-nation Street. The idea was simple: Tony Blair and the rest of his family would drop into the local Corrie-style corner shop from time to time and I would depict their developing relationship with the new proprietors—with the Blairs unaware that the […]

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Giving Cinema-Goers The Heebie-BDs

You’re watching a movie and Bruce Dern: or Brad Dourif: appears on screen. What’s your next thought? “Oh he’s going to turn out to be a sympathetic, mentally stable, all-round mensch of a character.” “Hey, here’s Uncle B: twenty-four-hour party person and master of benign slapstick!” “If, some time before the end of this reel, […]

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On The Preservation Of Source Texts

Yesterday morning, I walked out of the building that my flat is in to find that the telephone box immediately outside it had been marked with words along the lines of: HEY NIGGAZ KKK 4 ME in six-inch high black letters. Today I was going to write a post about it—not an “end of civilization […]

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Dialectical Minimalism

Damian: [T]he impression I get is that Norm is more forgiving of Eagleton’s errors of reasoning than he should be Norm: Damian leaves an impression about my viewpoints that I feel I have a right to comment on. Damian: I’d happily place a bet with Norm on which of the two of them will be […]

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Ball Lighting

A couple of weeks back I attended one of the two “reasonably smart” evening occasions that PooterGeekers kindly invited me to in response to my appeal so that I could test out some wacky lighting techniques. This was photographing various Latin American performers at a Cambridge college ball. I’m sure you’ll agree such a setting […]

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Our Survey Said

Further to Anthony’s latest post about the execution of the head of China’s Food and Drug Administration, this week’s Alanis Morissette Award goes to the Beijing Public Security and Statistics Bureaux. From Reuters, via The Scotsman: A Briton who has spent years trying to convince foreigners that China is not as repressive as Western media […]

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Bald Eagleton

I write short posts. Much goes unsaid. I often write ironically. Some subjects are better approached that way; or it’s just more fun for me to tackle them sideways. What I do say, I say in plain English in the hope that my words at least are clear to everyone who reads them. Reading Norm […]

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Flying The Vee For Israel

The Israel Ministry of Tourism would have you believe that the tiny Mediterranean state is a hip young place full of sunkissed, lean ‘n’ lovely twenty- and thirtysomethings, alternately running high-tech start-ups and hanging out on the beach playing frisbee with their gay friends. But the country has a dark underbelly. If you want to see it […]

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Bitches From Hell

I’ve observed before that there are good reasons to criticise Cherie Blair, but it’s revealing that those aren’t the reasons why most people in the media criticise her. It’s worse than that: they hate her—and for the oldest human reason of all: she’s “not one of us”. Cherie Booth was a poor north-of-England Catholic girl […]

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Jib Jab

I left The Observer on the shelf at the supermarket yesterday because it had another load of bollocks about MMR and autism on the front cover. Around the blogosphere, people who A) know some science and/or B) can be arsed to use Google show the newspaper’s science editor how to do his job: lizardoid Eustonian […]

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Words Like Weapons

Here’s a nice coincidence. Up at The Weekly Standard Website there is a piece by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan about the strategies being used by Coalition forces in the war against terrorists in Iraq. It’s interesting. Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber sneers—on the reasonable grounds that Frederick Kagan is obviously not a disinterested commentator, and […]

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“Till Murder Us Do Part”

Here at PooterGeek we love reality mags. If I had to compile a list of British Women I Have Met Who Will Never Appear In One then new media guru Suw Charman would be in the top ten, but she’s the sort of girl who probably plugs her MacBook Pro into an Infinite Improbability Drive to […]

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Passenger Ships

Also at that party the other day, one of the Young People told me that Passenger, featuring Richard Brincklow on keyboards, are high up on BBC Radio 2’s playlist. The next day, one of my spies inside the Passenger camp also passed on to me a delicious factoid. Whenever Richard and I write or perform any music […]

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Victorian Values

Some new blogs on the roll here: Vic, Brighton & Hove resident and occasional PooterGeek commenter, has her own place now, called The Stopping Service. On the political side of things, I’ve mentioned Conservative Home here before and both Political Betting and Polling Report are also well worth dipping into. Lastly, I have added Martin […]

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Dave The Rave

I listened to Gordon Brown’s first Prime Minister’s Questions as actual Prime Minister yesterday. If you put the substance of the “debate” aside (as the laws of contemporary British journalism require all commentators to do) then David Cameron made Gordon Brown sound a bit rickety. The good thing for our democracy is that, before most […]

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Tweaked Banner

If you are seeing the text of the PooterGeek header image as two sets of the same letters overwriting one another then hit “reload”—that’s CTRL-SHIFT-R on a proper Web browser and F5 on Internet Explorer—and it should sort itself out. If you are then still seeing double then upgrade to Firefox.

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World Of Wonga

I caught up with wongaBlog this morning. I enjoyed this post about Jonathan Edwards’ reflections on his conversion from Christianity to atheism. It’s all downhill from here, Jonathan. Believers might be wrong, but believing often makes for happier and more successful people; and I enjoyed this marvellous rant about anti speed camera campaigners. My apologies […]

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